


The History of Love

by therewasagirl



Series: BENEATH THESE PAVEMENTS (shells, bones and silence) [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Summer Roatrip fic, mentions of PTSD (very light)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 04:51:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4653000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therewasagirl/pseuds/therewasagirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So... when did you know you were in love, exacly?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The History of Love

**Author's Note:**

> I got a it stuck on my last chapter on 'To rage' so i thought i could post this in the mean time. This happens in the same 'universe', so to speak, but you DO NOT need to have read that story to get this one, so to new readers: no worries.  
> I decided to start writing it when those gifs came out, of Stephen Amell telling everyone Oliver realized he loved Felicity when he gave her the whole 'Because of the life that I lead' speech. (except, I wanted to explore Felicity's side of things a bit)  
> I don't know how well i have succeeded, but I hope you like.

 

‘And it’s like some tiny nothing that sets off a natural disaster halfway across the world, only this was the opposite of disaster, how by accident she saved me with that thoughtless act of grace, and she never knew, and how that, too, is the part of the history of love.’

Nicole Krauss

Days in the sun, with just the two of you, have taught you the meaning of quiet again. It feels like learning something new, so long have you gone without it. There are days when she slips out of bed and puts on your t-shirt and the very temperature of the room is that of happiness[1]. Days when you wake with the sun on your face you kiss and surrender to each other for hours, before saying a single word [2]. ( _There are bad days too, about as many as the good ones. Days when she wants to talk and you won’t. Nights when she needs to sleep and you can’t.[3] Times when the silence between you is dissonance and whatever sound one might make would disturb the other’s quiet.)_

There was that time when you bought two weeks’ worth of food and rented out a cabin high in the moutain woods for five days, and you’d eat outside every night, with plenty of stars above you and plenty of wine for her ( _you teach yourself to sip it bit by bit and more often than not, her voice at a steady pace keeps the distant sound of glasses shattering at bay_ ) ( _these days that only happens rarely; these days red wine reminds you of Felicity_ ).

You both ask each other ‘what are you thinking’ about as often as you don’t. You do it deliberately - It’s an exercise for the ‘us’ you are building, because choosing each other despite the difficulties, did not in fact ease them. You never allowed each other questions like that before. Your flagrant secrets demanded reticence, so did the walls you built around them, to protect yourself. ( _But then, you remember how last summer, you started shedding them one at time to her. Not the ugly parts, not always, but the parts in between; and every time you did, it felt like holding open a door or a window into that promise that was budding between you like a rising tide._ ) And then later, ‘what are you thinking’ became forbidden. It would have felt like an act of desperation if thrown in that cold distance between you that swallowed just about every shade of your relationship for almost a year.

The answers you get ( _that you have to teach yourself to give)_ never quite turn out the way either of you expects, but you both keep asking, because talking without fear of everything imploding feels like it’s worth it. ( _Sometimes its like pulling nails, other times like breathing_ ) Both of you peel back layers til you stand naked in front of each other and then start again, with skin and tissue, exposing bones and soft insides, all the bruising and every place it scarred. It’s one of the scariest fucking things you’ve ever done ( _never done - neither has she, not like this_ ) and you do it over and over again, and at one point you can be sure that she carries truths about you around, under her skin, same as you do with hers and it’s the first time in years that the loneliness corroding your insides just… _stops_ aching.

So when you say it, it’s not nearly the scariest thing you’ve confessed to her, but the conversation takes such a strange turn, after. You don’t even really know _why_ you say it that night, and not another ( _though you do… you feel like there is no skin separating you that night, that you’re both as raw as an exposed nerve_ ). A storm just rolled through the coast, of the kind that shook the sky into falling to pieces ( _the kind that makes your every muscle tense like a live wire, that makes you unable to bear touch or a spoken word because you’re terrified to your bones_ ) and Felicity, she saw you cracking open before you noticed yourself. She pulled you through even though you were so far gone she was fuzzy at the edges. Even though you were terrified to lay a finger on her.

There has never been anything abstract to you about Felicity’s love, but at times like this, after sex ( _the kind of sex you haven’t had in a long time, toeing with the wrong side of desperate, trying to eat each other alive, because anything, anywhere was better than_ there _and Felicity_ knows _, the way she knows most things you don’t want her to. She starts it without having any idea where she's going, and what happens is that you fuck for hours, until everything outside of your bodies thins out and all that is left is each other’s skin and ecstasy, of the kind that slices to the bone, again and again until you can’t anymore, until there's nothing but water in your bones and you're shaking through the high of that marrow-deep, liquid kind of exhaustion that settles in after a long good fuck_ ), when you’re so close that the world is still mostly at bay, when there’s still touch and mostly though, still heat and mostly breathing[5], you can feel her love like it has its own physical presence, wrapped around you, ( _your safe place right there with your head on her breastbone, her heartbeat strong in your ear_ ).

In a muffled, quiet voice, you tell her that you love her, ( _and that is deliberate too_ ). You have loved her for so much longer than you ever dared first say it, but this you don’t tell her. Instead you tel her that you meant it, even then. ( _you know she knows what you mean_ )

Her fingers cart through the short hair of your sweaty nape without pause.

"Yeah, I kind of thought you might have."

You look up at her, swallow and find your throat dry. The croak that passes for you voice surprises you.

"You did?"

There is no surprise in her now, but there had been then. ( _that little shocked ‘Oh’ like a serrated knife in your lung_ ). You remember waiting for her hesitation. For her to step back. For her to say no.

( _you’d_ hoped _she would, just as much as you’d hoped she wouldn’t_ ).

She hadn’t.

There are some things that you both did – to yourselves, to each other – that are better not thought about too long. Things that make shame crawl up the back of your neck like a living thing with a thousand sticky legs and that terrify you, because it turns out that you don’t really know the lengths you are capable of going in good conscience and bad. ( _do you even have limits anymore_?) ( _But_ _is it strange then, that there are infinite ways you love_ her _more, for being the kind of woman that would say ‘yes’ to impossible odds, in the depths of the most hopeless places? That you love in her the things you can barely tolerate in yourself?_ )

"Ok, so it wasn’t like I could be _sure!_ I knew you _cared_ about me, but love is something else, you know. But then when I asked you about it, on Lian Yu, you didn’t deny it and I thought, ‘ok, this could be a ’ _maybe_ ‘’. And the whole flirty-flirt that summer kinda made that into a pretty _solid_ ‘maybe’?"

She meets your eyes and smiles softly, riot of curls all around her face, red-stained　lips stretching into a soft smile. A hushed whisper, that smile, a secret between you. It pulls you up to your elbows above her, to lean in and kiss her, gently. Your lips tingle at the barest brush and you’re reminded you’ve barely _stopped_ kissing her for hours ( _her lips are uneven and cracked at places with all the times she’s bitten at them_ ).

"What?" But you're smiling. You already know what, her smile tells you; that same look of soft wonder when she realised there was nothing about her you could forget, nothing you didn’t remember. Even a red pen.

( _And its so clear in the silence between you that you’re thinking of the same thing_ )She looks at you from beneath her lashes; a tease and real shyness are trapped in that look. But she rolls her eyes then and sighs.

"I was _so embarrassed_ about that you know." she admits, louder now, laughter just beneath the words, as you keep raining smiling kisses up her jaw. "I mean, _Oliver Queen_ right, and the old impressionable me thinks ‘wow he’s hot’, and what am _I_ doing when he walks in: chewing a pen! Geez! Way to go for first impressions."

"It was a great first impression." you lip-write high on her throat, just at the edge of her jawline. "My favourite first impression."

She snorts.

"Yeah, well…" she is about to joke it away, but doesn’t, and you pay attention the second you catch her expression. All her confessions start with that look in her eyes: something soft and serious that reflects the quiet of Felicity’s deepest, truest self. "That was _the_ moment you know. When you said that. The moment when I thought, ‘ _this is going to happen’_."

The words burrow beneath your ribs and they are both sweet and sharp teethed.

And you remember how you'd felt, how the buzz of nerves died down, leaving room for that quiet wonder in both of you, for the excitement of a new discovery. And how, the moment after that, just after she had dared to feel certainty, it had all gone to hell.

( _What Felicity doesn’t tell him is how ready she’d been, then and there, to be 100% in for 'them’, together. That she’d been to that point a while, ready to give it her all. Didn’t tell him what a huge step that had been for her, what a risk, to open herself that way; how terrified of being hurt she had been._

And how devastating, after, putting everything back in that box, when nothing fit neatly in it anymore. How she’d needed a clean break and he couldn’t give her one and that had left her walking around for days with broken bones poking beneath her skin. How hard she’d tried with Ray, because if Oliver didn’t want to cut it off neatly, then she would! _She would choose herself, because as it happened, nobody else would choose her._

‘I’m important. I matter _.’ Felicity had said that to herself over and over, angrily (at herself for being so close to regressing to the scared little girl she had left behind years ago; at him for… everything!). It had never really stopped hurting though. The threads with which she’d put herself back together were coloured of these memories, the possibilities, and they reminded her, every time, of what it was that had happened, what could have happened, what didn’t._

All these things, she doesn’t tell him. It’s too early. It would serve no purpose but to hurt him. They have later. She can tell him then. When the pain has faded a bit more, into vaguer memory)

And you’re so wrapped up into that, into what it means and all the feelings it brings back that you almost miss what she said before.

Almost.

You pull back to look at her face, search her eyes. You want to ask but there are parts of you that already know the answer and you dread it, coming from her lips. From the surface, the two of you seemed so straightforward, your relationship as easy as your connection to each other. But there are nooks and dark places, and things that have happened, people between you, that make your history feel as much of a minefield as any other. This is one of those times.

But just as you decide not to ask, she narrows her eyes at you and one of her eyebrows twitches upwards. It’s not surprising at all that she noticed the piling words behind your teeth. She nudges your hip with her knee.

‘Use words, Oliver’

"On Lian Yu, after we put away Slade… _that_ was when the thought of us, together, crossed your mind as a ‘maybe’?"

You try to keep it even, but it doesn’t count for much. It didn’t take you long at all to fall out of the habit of keeping track of your expressions and even so, Felicity’s had years to learn to listen to your face, every shift of your body, all the direct shades of your stillness. ( _She listened most of all to your eyes, so embarrassingly transparent, but you have no way of knowing that - until she tells you_ ). You’re at a point where there is no standing chance of hiding from her. Which is why, even if your incredulity had been more subtle, Felicity would have caught it regardless.

"Yeah, that’s a complicated question." she warns. "Well, not really, but it has a complicated answer! Or an answer in stages? I don’t know!"

"We’re not going anywhere."

You’ve talked through entire states about what happened this year, but not much about before that. And you know that some things can’t be answered without opened at least various cans of worms, but it doesn’t matter.

Felicity rolls her eyes.

Fine

, her huff says, _lets dig up the dull blades_.

"Well, I definitely had some feelings there from the start; predominantly _lust_ -" She has such a cheeky expression on her face it’s hard not to smile as widely as she is. "-since you were practically always half-naked, Mr. ‘ _look at my abs Felicity, aren’t they great!_ ’"

"I do _not_ talk like that!" Is your immediate response even as you squirm ( _and yelp in a very undignified way_ ) away from her hand groping at said abs without any kind of grace ( _it’s no coincidence that she touches you exactly where you’re ticklish either_.) "And I’ve _never_ said _that_ either."

She dismisses that with an eye-roll.

"You didn’t have to. But yeah, that wasn’t going anywhere. I mean, I knew I was in trouble since Christmas that first year, but…"

You blink at her slowly.

"Christmas? That’s…" That’s forever ago, you want to say, and you can’t remember any detail that stood out besides the fact that, yet again, Felicity had managed to impress you just by breathing. You saw her only once, about the Dark Archers – _Merlyn’s_ , even in your thoughts the name curls around a sneer – arrows, but what…

The look on her face is soft, and warm, and it’s like she knows exactly that you have _no_ idea what could be so special to her about that one time.

"You had me tracking Merlyn’s arrows." She tells you, just as she pushes to lay on her side so that you are now face to face with a couple of inches of space between you. "Remember?"

You give her a tiny smile, a small nod and watch her face soften. There are days at a time missing from the first year you were back, but you haven’t forgotten a single detail about a single time you were with her. 　

You’re remarkable

.

"And you smiled at me." her voice has gone so quiet, eyes as soft as velvet. She says it like it has a secret meaning, one you don’t know. But whatever this is, you know just by the way her eyes meet yours that it’s now, in this _look_ she gives you, where the truth lies. ( _it’s very much alike the looks she’d given you then_ )

"I’d seen you smile before and sometimes there had even been something honest about it, but, _that_ time… I really felt like you were _all_ there; like you were being the most honest you had ever been with me." she is looking somewhere in the direction of your throat, and there is something wistful about her expression now. You want to reach over and hold her closer than ever, but you don’t dare interrupt. "I thought to myself ‘ _this is the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in forever!_ ’. And the fact that you smiled like that because of _me_ , that was… " you can tell she’s embarrassed but she looks at you right in the eye regardless. "By the time you were out the door, I was freaking out, because I knew I was in trouble."

She tilts her head, rests the side of her face on her linked hands, looking at you with smiling eyes, ( _you don’t miss the sadness that lingers at the edges_ ). This time you do reach out, smooth an open palm up her spin and curl your finger around the back of her neck, the way she likes. ( _and because she does, she turns her head and brushes her lips against the centre of your palm, when you reach for her face_ )

"I didn’t really see it as something that could happen, you know. I never allowed myself to think that way." she admits softly, like she’s shedding a secret. You know why she felt that way though. She hadn’t been a conscious thought in your mind for a long time… and she’d known it, hadn’t she? 　"But then the thing with the Dollmaker happened, and… 　And I started thinking about 'maybes’."

You know what she’s talking about. That had been the first time she had gone out in the field like that, so deliberately bait, and you’d been so hyperaware of all the ways everything could go wrong that you’d had trouble focusing. You kept thinking about all the promises you’d made and broken before, and how Felicity was the only person you had never failed even once… and how that night you could break your promise to her too.

You remember walking down the foundry steps, after, ( _jumping, more like it_ ) and finding her sitting on the table, wrapped in the spare grey blanket because she couldn’t stop shaking. And you had barely seen Diggle there by her side; you’d just seen her wide eyes, scared and watery, and the tip of her red nose and how pale she looked and you’d just _gone_ to her. Before any kind of coherence was there to stop you, she was in your arms and once there, you held on _so_ _tight_ , without thought for consequence or meaning. Because you wanted to, because you needed it and at her every shiver, you were reminded she needed it too. You don’t even remember how long you held her, it hadn’t mattered at all. Don’t remember what you said, or anything else. You remember the way she’d fit against you though ( _remembered that_ _for a long time after_ ), how shaken she had been, her arms like a live band around your waist, gripping at the back of your jacket. You remember lowering your face into her hair and just staying there, breathing her in deep.

Felicity has never been your ‘maybe’. From the start, she was the one person that most disconcerted you! She has always been that one variable you couldn’t even try to frame into your system. Hers was the voice that would intrude in your ever-present mantra of _'I have a mission; I have a mission_ ’ with her phrases like ’ _I imagined you saying that under different circumstances_ ’ and just like that, she’d completely shatter that focus. She’d been the first person to make you actually blush in years, and no, thre had never been anything cute about it, because it used to fluster you and leave you reeling for control, because you never quite figured out who she needed you to be. There was no clear cut answer to that, because she was the one of two people that knew every which side of you and more often than not, you needed a lot more than she seemed to need you…

But that night, after the Dollmaker, you were _finally_ able to focus immediately on what she needed from you and of course, _of course_ you gave it to her. You didn’t even pause to catch her in your arms, it didn’t even occur to you to question your right to welcome her there, not until you and Digg dropped her off to her townhouse and you found yourself shell-shocked, gripping the wheel so hard your bones strained, for a good ten minutes, asking yourself _'what the fuck did you just do and how the hell did you manage to do it_ ’ and why the hell did everything on the inside of you feel like it was still shaking. No, there had never been anything about Felicity that whispered ‘maybe’ to you - Felicity has always been an absolute, in every which direction she chose to act on. Especially in the way she was so irritatingly genuine that it _forced_ you to react to her with every bit of sincerity you were capable of ( _even at a time when you had no idea what the genuine part of you even was_ ); reminded you that you _could_.

( _never mind that you’d found your uncontrolled responses to her completely disturbing those first two years. Or that they scared the hell out of you._ )

It could not have been 'maybe’, when you were halfway in love with her before you even know what you were doing, having no idea when it started until it hit you in the face.

"And then Russia happened." you say, and feel her take a deep breath, shake her head.

"And then Russia happened." Felicity repeats and at the mere memory of it she exhales, as if the conversation has just drawn to a close. "And that was the end of _that_. I mean, I knew you cared about me, obviously. But… yeah, that ‘maybe’ - totally buried."

And the way she says that… they are so well past that moment, but still, your heart thuds hard in your chest, your pulse picking up speed along with the whirlwind of your feelings.

It all comes to a screeching halt into the face of a very simple truth.

"I really hurt you, didn’t I."

It’s not even a question. You know you did. You saw it in her face even then, that disappointment so sharp that it made your chest cave in like nothing else before had.

And you consider now: what right do you have really, to be surprised that she didn’t believe it possible between you until the very last moment? None at all, because you put that disbelief in her, didn’t you? ( _when she let id slip one day that she’d believed, for the longest time, that you regretted that first kiss between you, you felt like the lowest piece of human garbage to ever to breathe around her… because you put_ that _there too, and you know it_ ) With your sleeping with Isabel in Russia, your 'with the life that i lead’, drawing a line even as all you kept thinking was _’what i wouldn’t give, to let you love me’*_. 　

"Oliver…" Her sigh has some weariness in it, a pinch of irritation. "It’s not… Yeah ok, so that hurt. Cause you were saying how you’d rather not be with someone you could care about and what i kept hearing was that you didn’t want me. But honestly," and she turns those eyes to you, the compassion on her face infinite even now, for that man you used to be. "All I wanted was to just shake the stupid out of you, because could you be more tragic with your choice of women? I don’t think so."

She tries to lighten the moment ( _'We accept the love we think we deserve’ she’d told you once and there is nothing light about your tendency to go after broken people, but nevermind that for now because-)_ all you can see is her wide-eyed shock, the hurt painted so vividly on her face, in that hallway in Russia. And afterwards, god… the silence between you had been awful. More than you thought you could bear, at times and you only had to bear it for 29 hours. That subtle change, that shift between you that had felt like _more_ , ever since she and Digg picked you up from the island - that had been over. It had been something precious and _frightening_ and you killed it. Either in that hallway in Russia or in your office days later, it doesn’t matter - you still felt it die in your hands and there was nothing you could do about it. ( _thinking about it now, thinking about Felicity letting go of her love for you, giving up, it makes you shift closer, curl around her almost without thought_ )

"You told me i deserved better." the words slip out before you can stop them.

She tilts her head, you feel her hand skim along your jawline. Yes, she’d told you that. Took you a while to believe it though.

Of course it did. (I _t didn’t take you nearly enough time to fall in love with her, as it did to allow yourself to just_ be _in love with her_ ). And you both know she hadn’t been talking about herself when she’d said that: that was what had literally left you speechless for whole minutes staring after her, that time. Because Felicity may not have been thinking about herself that way, but you sure had been. And about how far off your reach she actually felt. Impossible, really. ( _she would have slapped you for sure if she ever knew you thought about her that way_ ) You’d been so convinced that you’d hurt her, and not just get her hurt, because you could never be the man she needed you to be; how could you? Which part of you that wasn’t selfish would ever be strong enough to forgive you, for subjecting her to your damage and hurt her that way?

It took you a while to shake that mentality ( _it took you quite a while to earn it too, so_ …) That darkness and death you have been through, all the fractures it has left behind in you, all the pieces you have lost to it - those remain even now, but _now_ you are at least starting to think you too deserve to be better, for your own sake. That you can fight for yourself without the blood of everyone you have put to the grave weighting your hands and soul.

( _you still don’t believe you can be the kind of man Felicity deserves, but you can try to be a kind of man, because she made her choice and you are it._ )

And maybe that’s why you’re going to tell her. You decide it right then. You never thought you would, but - as so many other things before - for her, you do.

"When you said that to me… Being in love with you was a long time coming, but I only realised what was happening around that time."

Felicity looks at you first with confusion and then, as the meaning sinks in, her lips fall open in surprise and there’s a sliver of hurt in her eyes too, one you don’t understand.

"You… What?"

You haven’t heard her sound so hesitant in a long time and you feel the first curl of dread now because you didn’t mean to hurt her. You meant to tell her the truth.

You gulp around that question. It’ too late to turn around now, but you don’t know how to say this, how to phrase it. Because the honest to god truth is that you can’t really point to her the moment and say - this was it for me. You have no idea when that happened for you, until one day you were standing over her desk feeling like your chest had just imploded, because you had let down people before, but with her it had felt different. Seeing the disappointment so sharp on Felicity’s face had made you retract so fast you practically tripped on your own feet. ( _you will never be able to shake off how much that little curl of her lips had felt like disgust, if only for a moment, even though that was probably your fear and anxiety more than her intent_ ) And before you knew it, you were roundabout telling her you didn’t think it was possible, whatever it was budding between them. It wasn’t possible with you and anyone ( _and it had been strange, being slapped in the face by your own feelings like that, even as the words left your mouth_ )

"I don’t know how to explain it." It’s a cop out. But it’s the pure truth too. "It wasn’t about maybes for me, back then. It happened, and it couldn’t happen, so I just sort of…"

"Buried it." she finishes for you, and the shrug you give is a pathetic excuse of an answer but it’s the best you can do. It sounds like you were both in the same situation, but you know better. Felicity is smarter than that; much more aware of herself and braver than you are. It’s true, she jumps into things, dangerous things, without really having a plan because she trusts herself enough to know she’ll be able to figure it out. But she’s not the kind of person to jump with her eyes closed. No, Felicity had known exactly what she felt, hadn’t she? She’d been to that place long before you, and put it to the side, into the box of nice things that would never happen. _You_ , on the other hand… You fell so deep in denial you wouldn’t have known which way was up for a long, long time.

Because you never half-ass anything, do you? Always taking things to the extreme. 　Maybe you haven’t changed that much, from your days before the Gambit. Maybe some things you can’t lose, they just reshape themselves to the new person you become.

Felicity turns to look at you then, as if she remembered something and her confusion turns into something sharper as her hand goes to your arm, fingers tipped with bright pink nails tracing the small scar from the Count’s bullet. She looks at you and you stare back, and those words you said to her that night in the Foundry ( _when she’d been looking at you with glassy eyes and you’d wanted more than anything to hold her against you as tightly as possible until you could memorize the rhythm of her breathing_ ), they come back. They stare you in the face right now and there is something about it - about this huge, live thing between you that seems to always have had its own heartbeat - that feels inevitable. The thought is like a flutter of bird wings against your face.

It would be so easy to lie there side by side with her so close, the mark of the two of you all around you, to believe that you were meant to be. That this was a fixed point in the universe and even in a thousand parallel lives you would have found and loved each other. That there had never been any choice to make. But you’re both so stubborn, single-minded even, in the things you want. Both your lives have been defined by your choices and the truth is, the choice was always there, and you chose each other, and had to go through hell to get just be here. Being with Felicity had never felt inevitable to you ( _it had felt impossible!_ ), and in the end, it had been deliberate. In your mind, that makes it better.

( _mostly you feel you made her wait for you, but yeah, that’s another matter… because maybe, maybe now you can believe you’re worth waiting for_ )

"You were with Sara… Later…" her voice is barely a whisper, but you catch it. Catch the hurt in it. And you know it has nothing to do with you ( _you’re self-centered, but not_ that _much_ ). It’s for the woman you both loved and lost.

You don’t say anything to that. There is nothing to say.

"It was nice… knowing you were happy. Both of you, actually." She says softly, looking at her hands. "A bit sad maybe, sometimes, but nice."

You have wondered before, briefly, about what she’d felt back then. You were so distracted during that time, your attention being pulled into a thousand different directions. In the midst of all that, you hadn’t spared a thought for Felicity, because she was one of the only two steady points in your life. ( _Another kind of selfishness from you, probably, thinking she was above human things like doubt and insecurity… you know better now than to put anyone on any pedestal. It only gets people hurt._ ) It had been a comfort really, to know that. Until it wasn’t.

( _that time you saw her with Palmer and got the urge to break the whole Foundry and just run, run until everything was nothing but a dot on a map and then throw away the map - you wondered, had Felicity been jealous? Had she been upset? Had she ever felt you way you felt? And as soon as you wonder, you know the answer is probably no. Felicity loved Sara - not the way you did, but probably just as much as you did - in that honest and 'on her sleeve’ way that was so typical of her. You probably won’t be able to understand what it was between them, but you can relate, because you know well how Sara drew people in. That, the almost gravitational pull Sara used to have on people, on_ you _\- if anything in your life had been inevitable, it was probably that_.)

When she looks back at you her eyes are velvet soft, pain lingering at the edges and but she swipes it away with decision and the next time she looks at you, it’s almost stubbornly tucked away. You wish you were able to do that and still feel things the same way, but you can’t, not anymore. It’s all or nothing with you…

"Enough with the memory lane for one night." Felicity says softly and you have to agree. You have no intent of denying any of the obstacles you’ve faced to be here, anymore than you want to deny the good place you are now, but right in this moment? You’d rather be there with her than anywhere.

So you nod and the hand that had been tracing the dip of her spine, up and down, goes to the back of her neck. The barest pressure of your fingers and she understands: she leans in just as you lean up, your lips meet in the middle, her hand skimming up your chest, pressing above your heart and above, to the back of your head. And it’s easy to slip away from the hold of memories and live in that moment. Neither of you do 'perfect’ very well - between you, you have enough imperfections and quirks and traumas to make finding rest ( _let alone peace_ ) an uphill battle - but even _you_ can, occasionally, have something flawless.

You breathe against each other’s lips, brush your nose agains hers and smile, kiss again. You open up to her, feel her lick the inside your mouth and fuse you together; and as she does, you flip her on her back, settling yourself between her thighs slowly, and you think, yes, _yes_ \- this right now is one of those moments. You thought you were all burned out, but then you feel her alive and warm and soft around you and you know you’re going to fuck again. And as you kiss each other - lazy and unhurried, like you could kiss her mouth for days and she could learn your taste forever - you know this time it’s going to be slow and it’s going to be sweet and your fingers are already twining with hers above her head as you move together, waking each other’s bodies up again. The rush of want that warms your veins almost makes you lightheaded and it’s amazing how you’re getting hard against her again, wanting inside of her, even as you feel your chest expand to the point of aching, even as you feel like you could stay right there, against her, like that, forever.

( _Both, both is better, the best; inside her with as much your bodies touching as you can make it, kissing just like_ that _even while you’re fucking; slowly, the way it makes the end of every nerve you have crackle with tension, the way you shake inside you and pleasure slices you deep; the way it makes your skin and hers break out into a sweat and you slide against her, how she’s hot and wet around your whole body and not just your dick and how that makes you feel like you have her mouth everywhere she is touching you, and not just on your neck, your lips, your face… And how just the thought makes you groan, tethering on the edge. For all that it’s slow and tender, you feel the tension building as hard as ever and when it happens, it zigs up your spine, it floods your brain, gives you white spots. You come with her throaty moan in our ear and your mouth on her neck and you hand on her clit, twitching thighs holding you in a hard grip and pulling you inside as she bows off the bed so hard it actually moves you too. The warmth of it lingers all the way to your bones, it’s like floating, and as your breathing and heart rate calms you almost,_ almost _fall asleep that way. You move away just enough not to squish her and then you’re out, and so is she._ )

As you drift off, your last thought is of how she’s going to scrunch up her nose at the state she will wake up tomorrow, at the mess you both made and then slept in. And she’ll roll her eyes about it and hop from the bed into the shower and, just like every morning, you’re going to watch her ass with incomparable fascination as she does so, until it disappears from sight… and then you’ll probably follow her.

+

"You know… while we are on the topic of Russia."

You blink at her, probably doing a very good impression of an owl.

"We really weren’t." In that alarmed, _'where did your brain go_ ’ tone that you say things to her sometimes. Personally, when she does things like this, you feel totally justified in it. "In fact, I distinctively remember us dropping that."

Like a stone, actually.

"We did. I picked it up. Because I never got why Isabel hated me so much. It kinda always took me by surprise to be honest, cause as far as she was concerned, I was just the blonde thing you were screwing around with, nothing more." she shrugs 　then. "Of course, she turned out to be a murderous supervillain, but as far as explanations go, that is not a good one."

She glances at you and then does a double take, eyebrows rising on her forehead now that she can tell how motionless you’ve gone. Under the table, she nudges you with her bare foot against your calf, toes curling and pulling on your hairs a little, just enough to tickle you.

"What?"

"Ah… that was maybe my fault?"

One of her eyebrows goes up as she sits down by you. "Is that a question?"

"Just a little bit. Mostly she hated you because she hated everybody. But it _might_ have been…"

"Oliver!" her voice is firm. She knows you’re dodging.

"Let’s not." you’re almost pleading.

She looks at you and she’s both amused and disbelieving. You haven’t dogged any subject quite like this before.

"Later." you rush to say. "I’ll tell you later. Ok?"

Both her eyebrows rise up and now she’s openly laughing. On the inside, but still laughing and you realise you sound really nervous.

"Tell me now."

"Felicity!"

"Oliver!"

She matches your tone exactly. Something tells you that she’s even unconsciously imitating the look on your face, the way she frowns without meaning it, hidden laughter shining in her eyes.

"I… She might have noticed when… when we were together…"

You hesitate. Felicity blinks at you slowly.

"What?"

You feel like squirming, which is weird; you don’t squirm under a knife’s edge but the looks she gives you makes you want to.

"I might have said something to kinda make her understand she didn’t… she didn’t really have my full attention?"

You have no idea why this makes you so nervous really. But you also have no idea how Felicity will take it, so…

you watch her face, know the exact moment when she understands. her expression falls, face going blank, her lips fall open.

"Oh. _Oh_!"

She sets the cup down steadily and looks at you with wide eyes and pursed lips - the kind that usually means she is thinking real hard about something. You wait almost holding your breath… and its almost funny how you have to keep from flinching just a little bit when she reaches back to her coffeecup and takes a sip.

"Huh."

You blink. " _Huh_? That’s all you’re gonna say?"

Felicity looks at you, shrugs and its just bit helpless.

"What else can i say?"

You release a breathless laugh.

"What, did you think I’d be angry?" and even as she asks, you can see her considering it. "I don’t really know how to feel about it, honestly. Im gonna need some time to process it."

"Sure."

"It really does explain a lot though." she says as she goes to top up her cup. "I mean, not a great reason to try to carve someone’s face out, but i can understood the impulse. I mean, i _did_ run the woman over with a van, after all."

Your smile gets wider as you slide up to her putting your arms around her and your chin on her shoulder as you hum noncommittally. She leans against you as soon as she feels you there.

"I don’t think the circumstances warrant a comparison Felicity."

Her shrug this time is careless.

"How about hiking tomorrow?" She says as she turns in your arms. You raise one eyebrow at her and she rolls her eyes back at you. "Come on, you’ve been nudging it for days and despite what you might think, subtle is not your strongest point, Arrow."

You snort.

She pushes at your shoulder.

"I expect to be pampered afterwards." she warns. "I mean it. I want ice-cream and wine, lots of wine. and foot massages."

You hide the wideness of your smile in her neck.

"It’s going to be muddy out there for a few days, because of the rain." You tell her quietly. And you’re both swaying just a bit the way you sometimes go, because you like the way she feels against you like that. ( _with an internal sigh you concede that your tendencies of not dancing will have to change_ )

"In a few days then." she says, almost dismissive and you feel her step on your feet, her tiny toes pressing on top of yours.

"What shall we do with our time."

She giggles warmly against your throat and your arms tighten around her. Your hands slide down her sides and in a move that is now familiar you fill your palms with her glorious ass and lift her on the counter. She already has her arms loosely around hers shoulders before you are even settled. You kiss like the whole day will be morning and you have nothing else to do, nowhere else to be but there. As it happens, its the truth.

\-----

_[1] Inspired by - David Leviathan, Lover’s dictionary: I cannot find the quote right now, but the part about her putting on his T-shirt and the phrase ‘the temperature of happiness’ is verbatim from that quote, so disclaimer there._

_2 - David Leviathan, Lover's dictionary_

_[3] ‘Nights when I need to sleep and you can’t. Days when I want to talk and you won’t. Hours when every noise you make interferes with my silence. Weeks when there is a buzzing in the air, and we both pretend we don’t hear it’ David Leviathan, The lover’s dictionary_

_[4 ] It was after sex, when there was still heat and mostly breathing, when there was still touch and mostly thought . 　David Leviathan, The Lover’s dictionary_

_(i may have used other quotes from the book and missed them, so anything you recognize from there is NOT mine, obviously_

 


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